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Reuters, Baghdad

A suicide bomber on a bicycle killed 28 policemen at their base in the volatile Iraqi province of Diyala on Monday, police said, in one of the deadliest strikes on Iraq's security forces in months.

The bomber entered the base and attacked a group of policemen -- members of a rapid reaction force -- doing their morning exercises, said Major-General Ghanim al-Quraishi, police chief of Diyala province.

He said details of the bombing were confused because everyone at the scene had been killed or badly wounded.

The base is in the city of Baquba, capital of Diyala province, where al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups as well as Shi'ite Muslim militias operate.

At least 20 people were wounded in the attack, including a woman and a child, police said. A car bomb in a residential area in the northern Iraqi town of Siniya demolished two homes and killed seven people and wounded 11, police and health officials said.

No group claimed immediate responsibility for the Baquba bombing, but it bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, which has often used suicide bombers in attacks on Iraqi security forces to devastasting effect.

Al Qaeda has vowed to step up attacks on the security forces as well as Sunni Arab tribal leaders and Sunni insurgents who have allied themselves with U.S. forces in Diyala province to try to root out the Sunni Islamist group.

U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major offensive against al Qaeda in Diyala province in June, regaining control of Baquba and forcing many of the group's fighters to flee elsewhere.

That led to the creation of "concerned citizens's groups" modeled on the tribal police units first formed in western Anbar, where tribal chiefs have joined with U.S. troops to force al Qaeda from the province.

Al Qaeda, however, has proved resilient and U.S. military commanders warn that it still retains the capability to launch devastating attacks.

Baquba's police chief was among 26 people killed last month when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque compound where local Shi'ite and Sunni Arab leaders were holding reconciliation talks.

The U.S. military has poured 30,000 extra troops into Iraq as part of President George W. Bush's new Iraq strategy to create a more stable security environment for the country's feuding leaders to reconcile their warring sects.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in sectarian violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs since February 2006, when bombers blew up a revered Shi'ite shrine in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

The second-ranking U.S. general in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno, said last week that violence had dropped to its lowest level since January 2006.

AFP, Gaza City

Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Monday as ground troops backed by air support pressed campaigns against militants who fire rockets into the Jewish state.

Two Palestinians were killed in the northern Gaza Strip and a third in the south during clashes between Israeli soldiers and gunmen. A civilian was also seriously wounded in the central part of the territory.

Mohammed Hamad, 28, from the armed wing of Hamas that controls the territory, and 44-year-old Farid Abu Odeh were killed by Israeli fire in the Beit Hanun area in the north during what witnesses said were heavy clashes.

Local medics said another 20 Palestinians were wounded, including three who were admitted to hospital in a serious condition.

An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed that troops were operating in the area and that an air strike was called in against a "cell of gunmen who opened fire against IDF forces operating in Beit Hanun area."

In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot dead another Hamas fighter in a pre-dawn ground operation.

Reuters, Buenos Aires

First lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will become Argentina's first elected woman leader after easily winning a presidential vote that was largely a referendum on her husband's economic successes.

Fernandez claimed victory in Sunday's election as official results showed her with well over 40 percent of the vote and a big lead over her closest rival, enough to avoid a runoff vote next month.

With results in from almost two-thirds of polling stations, Fernandez had 43.6 percent support, followed by former lawmaker Elisa Carrio, who had 22.6 percent and conceded defeat.

"This is a triumph for all Argentines," Fernandez told cheering supporters at her campaign bunker in a message that also acknowledged the challenges that lie ahead.

"Instead of putting us in a position of privilege, it gives us bigger responsibilities and greater obligations," she said of the election victory.

The Kirchners are Argentina's undisputed power couple and have been called "the Clintons of the South."

Fernandez, a 54-year-old lawyer, is one of her husband's key aides and a longtime senator. Voters weary of Argentina's repeated boom-and-bust cycles said they hope she will deepen the economic course set by her husband.

AFP, Ankara

Turkish forces have encircled 100 Kurdish rebels in a mountainous area near the border with Iraq, the Anatolia news agency reported on Monday.

Turkish army units had blocked off routes used by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels to return to their bases in northern Iraq after carrying out attacks in Turkey, the report said.

The operation in the Yuksekova region of southeastern Turkey came a day after the Turkish army killed 15 PKK rebels and as Ankara geared up for crucial talks with the United States to tackle the crisis over the bases in Iraq.

The militants were killed in a large-scale operation in the mountainous eastern province of Tunceli as some 8,000 troops, backed by helicopter gunships, assaulted rebel positions.

The military has killed 65 rebels since a PKK ambush near the frontier a week ago left 12 soldiers dead.

AFP, Kandahar

Afghan and NATO troops killed more than 30 Taliban fighters during a battle lasting several hours in southern Afghanistan, police and the defence ministry said Monday. The fighting erupted in Uruzgan province on Sunday after the joint forces launched an operation based on a tip-off about a hideout occupied by the Taliban, who are waging a fierce insurgency.

"Thirty Taliban were killed in the battle which lasted up to midnight. Two Afghan police and a soldier were also wounded," provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat told AFP.

"NATO forces called in air support to destroy the Taliban positions. There are Taliban bodies under dust and rubble in the area," he said.

Defence ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi said more than 30 Taliban were killed, while another 25 were wounded and 13 others arrested in the operation near Tirin Kot, the provincial capital.

A statement from the ministry said that the bodies of the dead militants were left on the battlefield. It gave a figure of 50 "terrorists" killed or wounded.

International military forces helped to remove the extremist Taliban from government in late 2001 and are now fighting the insurgency led by the hardline group and joined by other radical factions.

Another 80 Taliban were killed on Saturday in southern Helmand province when they tried to ambush a patrol of Afghan and foreign soldiers, the US-led coalition said.

AFP, Washington

UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric. "We haven't received any information there is a parallel, ongoing, active nuclear weapon program," the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency told CNN. "Second, even if Iran were to be working on nuclear weapons t they are at least (a) few years away from having such weapon," he said, citing Washington's own intelligence assessments. "My fear (is) that if we continue to escalate from both sides that we will end up into a precipice, we will end up into an abyss. The Middle East is in a total mess, to say the least. And we cannot add fuel to the fire." The White House Friday rejected any parallels between its Iran rhetoric and the run-up to the Iraq war, after fresh sanctions on Tehran and escalating US warnings fueled comparisons to the months before the 2003 invasion.

AP, Jerusalem

In the closest that Israel has come to confirming a mysterious air raid in Syria, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged to his Cabinet on Sunday that Turkish airspace might have been violated during the operation. Israel has not officially commented on the raid or acknowledged carrying it out. But at Sunday's Cabinet meeting, Olmert offered an ambiguous apology to Turkey, which has complained to Israel that its aircraft dropped fuel tanks on Turkish territory during the incursion. "If Israeli planes indeed penetrated Turkish airspace, then it was without prior intent or any intent to infringe upon or undermine Turkish sovereignty, which we respect," a statement from Olmert's office cited him as telling the Cabinet. In a conversation with Turkey's prime minister last week, Olmert "expressed Israel's apologies to the Turkish government and the Turkish people for any harm that might have been caused," the statement said.

Reuters, Mumbai

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday urged India to accelerate reforms to open up its economy and said China needed to move more quickly towards a market-determined currency. Paulson said India was mostly on the right path to modernise its financial sector, with a flexible currency, but China, with its tightly controlled yuan exchange rate, was increasingly the focus of protectionist sentiment around the world. "Very often around the world, if someone doesn't like globalization, the face they put on it is the face of China," the U.S. treasury secretary told an infrastructure conference in India's burgeoning financial capital. Paulson said China needed to allow the yuan to rise more in the near term to reflect the strong fundamentals of an economy that data last week showed expanded in the third quarter by 11.5 percent over a year earlier.

AFP, Washington

If French President Nicolas Sarkozy considers himself a big fan of the United States, he had no qualms about showing his prickly side in an interview with the top US television news magazine "60 minutes." Sarkozy, who was profiled by CBS, showed his impatience at an Elysee Palace interview calling his press secretary an "imbecile" for scheduling it. "He is stupid," he said in English before reverting to French to say he was a busy man. "I don't have the time. I have a big job to do t I'm not angry, I'm in a hurry," he told the flustered CBS interviewer. Later in the same interview, the French president left in a huff when the questions turned to his soon-to-be-former wife, Cecilia, two weeks before the separation was announced. "If I had something to say about Cecilia I would certainly not say it here," he first told the interviewer after she brought up the subject of his marriage. "You asked me that question," Sarkozy seems to say as he pulls off the microphone, stands up and walks away from the interviewer, who appears confused.

AFP, Manila

Twenty-three people have been killed in the run-up to Monday's elections in the Philippines to choose tens of thousands of village chiefs and their youth representatives, police said. There were 43 election-related incidents since September 29, when police went on alert for the polls, police said. Twenty people have also been wounded, while one person was said to have been abducted by a rival political group. More than 300 civilians have also been arrested for violating a gun ban ahead of elections, in which 50 million people are registered to vote. Radio reports said there was widespread vote buying in polling precincts in provinces near Manila, while rival politicians were intimidating voters in violation of laws forbidding them to be near polling sites. Manila police chief Geary Barias said his office was monitoring 21 "hot spots" in the city, where 5,000 policemen were deployed to curb the violence.

In the financial district of Makati city, supporters of rival candidates were involved in a brawl after both sides accused each other of cheating, radio reports said.